BBC 'doesn't have the will' to bring back Top Gear says Grand Tour creator in savage dig over show's future
The Grand Tour's Andy Wilman has opened up about his thoughts on Top Gear's future
AMAZON/BBC
The Grand Tour producer and long-time Jeremy Clarkson collaborator, Andy Wilman, has shared his honest opinions on the future of Top Gear.
The BBC motoring show has been "shelved" ever since Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff's infamous crash in December 2022 while Wilman has been keeping busy with Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May on Amazon's The Grand Tour.
Wilman and the presenting trio made Top Gear a success story for the Beeb before Clarkson departed after punching a producer which resulted in the other three following suit.
And the Beeb struggled to maintain the popularity Top Gear had with the trio at the helm, bringing in the likes of Chris Evans, Matt LeBlanc, Chris Harris, Paddy McGuinness, Flintoff and many others to front the series in the years post-Wilman.
Even though it's been shelved, Top Gear has made headlines of late after Harris tore into the Beeb for allegedly ignoring his safety concerns and warning "someone will die" before Flintoff's life-threatening crash.
Weighing into the ongoing speculation over its future, Wilman said: "What happened to Freddie was terrible and it’s wonderful to see him back [with Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams].
Freddie Flintoff, Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris were Top Gear's most recent hosts
BBC
"Top Gear coming back is a different question," Wilman mused to Radio Times before brutally surmising: "I don’t think the BBC has the will to make a car show.
"I don’t think they’re interested in the topic, or that there’s anyone interested in doing it."
When it comes to his own time on the show, Wilman has no regrets and stood by the work he, Clarkson, Hammond and May came up with - even if at times it proved controversial.
He said to RT: "Sometimes we stepped over the line and we did need a proper slap, but most of the times when we got into trouble, the viewers were like, ‘Well, nobody’s died – it’s fine.’
"None of our shows were ever going to be vanilla. The amount of times people would say, ‘Oh, would you do electric cars or alternative transport?’ for balance.
"And you’re like, ‘We’re making a f***ing car show. Do the Two Fat Ladies do balance – do they make a salad after they’ve made a steak and kidney pie?’ You know good telly only exists without balance. Leave that for the news."
Wilman's remarks come days after Harris appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience to divulge for the first time what happened from his point of view around the time of Flintoff's crash.
The former cricketer, who received a £9 million settlement from the Beeb after the accident, was seriously injured in a crash at the show's test track at Dunsfold in 2022.
Harris claimed to Rogan last week: "What was never spoken about was that three months before the accident, I'd gone to the BBC and said, 'Unless you change something, someone's going to die on this show'.
"So I went to them, I went to the BBC and I told them of my concerns from what I'd seen - as the most experienced driver on the show by a mile. I said, 'If we carry on, at the very least we're going to have a serious injury, at the very worst we're going to have fatality'."
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The Grand Tour's Andy Wilman spoke in this week's Radio Times
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Harris praised Flintoff and McGuinness for being "brilliant entertainers" but conceded they "didn't have the experience I had in cars" and were not "qualified to make decisions".
Turning his attention to the day of the crash, he said: "I remember the radio message that I heard. I heard someone say this has been a real accident here. The car’s upside down. So I ran to the window, looked out and he wasn't moving. [Flintoff] wasn't moving, so I thought he was dead.
"I assumed he was then he moved. He’s a physical specimen, Fred, he's a big guy - six foot five, six foot six, strong. And if he wasn't so strong, he wouldn't have survived.
"He's a great advert for physical strength and conditioning, because if he hadn't been that strong, he'd have just snapped his neck, he'd be dead."